Jul 25, 2011

Third semester kick starts...

It has been exactly a week since I came back from home, and the developments that have taken place in this short period of time are quite significant... In fact, I have had quite a hard time...
Things that I have learnt last week:

Shifting to a new room is TOUGH...
I came back on a Sunday evening and the place where my trunk was stored was locked. Result, I had to sleep without a mattress or a pillow. As if that was not enough, the condition in which I got the room was nowhere near perfect. The paint on the door hadn't dried yet, the bed and tables were literally whitewashed along with the rest of the room (cleaning that was quite a tough job) and the corridors were not in a condition you could describe as 'clean'.

Department classes can get cancelled ANYTIME.
My first working day in the third semester was a black day (basically, that means 9-6 classes). I somehow got up at 8 and prepared for the 9 am class, barely reaching ON time. Turns out the Prof didn't even know... Eventually all classes on that day got cancelled... The next day was similar, with hardly a class or two, but finally, we had a class in the department- on 'Paleontology'. And guess what was discussed: Jurassic Park! Well, the only thing that I remember from that class is that fossils are used to study climate :P

I will never, EVER complain about the IIT Roorkee campus.
Back in first year, I thought we had a small campus as compared to other IITs. However, last Saturday, I got a chance to visit the Saharanpur Campus of IIT-R. That is basically a 50-odd acre land, which serves as an extension centre for IIT-R, housing three branches. (Although I knew it was very near a paper factory) I had hoped that the buildings would be new and there'd be better facilities... However, the condition there was far worse. The buildings were sort of dilapidated, the academic centre in a pitiable condition, and the PCs of the computer centre having as low as 256 MB RAMs!
P.S. There is no need to purchase cycles there, the campus is so small!

I thank God for granting me a seat in GT at IIT-R main campus!I will never crib about my college!

If you want to visit Saharnapur, never take a road trip!
I basically went to Saharanpur to help in the registration process of the first yearites (being from IMG). There was also an IMG 3rd yrite accompanying me. I dunno why we did it, but we decided to take a bus to Saharanpur. It had rained heavily at night and it was still drizzling when we left. We first took a bus to Khutmalpur, supposedly 20-odd kms from Saharanpur. Due to the rains, there were floods on the roads which slowed us down(I was just wondering had we got stuck there, what would we have done!?!)... On reaching that place, we found that the main road was blocked and we needed to take a detour. So we took an auto to Fatehpur and then, a bus to Saharanpur. The road condition was such that now I consider the Guwahati-Silchar route to be a highway! After reaching the town, it was a hell of a trip to the campus... But our misery had just began...
On the return trip(trains were not available then), we literally came hanging in an auto to the bus station and this time, the journey to Fatehpur was seriously PAINFUL. We didn't get any seats to occupy and as I had mentioned the road condition... Well, I won't say anymore. Even thinking about that brings back my backache!
Basically, what I am trying to say is that, just take train if you wanna go to Saharanpur from Roorkee or vice versa!

It is very tough to spend even a day without going to the IMG lab.
As I mention in an earlier post, the IMG lab is considered to be the second home by its members. Due to some issues, the LAN in our lab was down. That meant there was no way I could connect to the databases and debug my application (especially after I added the login). Add to it the unavailability of the internet in the lab... That made going to the lab pointless (unless you wanna enjoy the AC)... That resulted in me making short trips to the lab at least 3-4 times a day, checking if the network was back to normal, but then I was left with a lot of free time, and I had no idea what to do with it... So I ended up roaming the campus, going from place to place wondering why my iTouch seemed to prefer only one song even in the Shuffle mode...

Finally, on the juniors.
Well, no comments on this one. I just met them!

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